Glass Houses by Design Legends: Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, Paul Rudolph

[Music] so thanks for being here and joining us for this really really special event glass houses by design legends Mies van der Rohe Philip Johnson and Paul Rudolph no other American House of the mid-century years had come to capture the fantasy of living in transparent glass as if three iconic houses which will be celebrated here this evening the Farnsworth house the Glass House and the Walker guest house constructed within two years of each other between 1949 and 1951 and designed by design legends these are among the most admired influential and memorable homes of the 20th century each marked extraordinary moments in the careers and legacies of their respective architects Mies van der Rohe Philip Johnson and Paul Rudolph they created these masterpieces of modernism in very different moments in their careers by the time he completed the Farnsworth House miss was 65 years old and was hailed as the world's most famous architect it ultimately became the symbol of his commitment to excellence to simplification to the art of the building a fuller presentation of his famous motto less is more when Philip Johnson moved to his Glass House he was 43 already instrumental is curator at MoMA he had just completed a modernist house for dominique and jean de Menil in houston and was in the process of establishing his architecture office Paul Rudolph was a young architect in his 30s in a recent graduate from Harvard Graduate School of Design just establishing his practice in Sarasota Florida when he designed a small guest house for his client Walter Walker a doctor from a wealthy Minnesota family the three glass houses were built in locations it couldn't have been more different from one another Farnsworth housed in a countryside in Illinois along the Fox River Philip Johnson's Glass House in a wealthy community in Connecticut surrounded by a New England lush landscape in the Walker house on an isolated island of the west coast of Florida facing the Gulf of Mexico the Farnsworth house was the first they touch stone a source of inspiration for the other two and for other endless houses built since yet Mies began envisioning his futuristic glass buildings decades earlier when living in Germany and when coining the term skin and bone architecture as a young architect he was a part of a group of German visionaries who believed that glass was an agent of change power and freedom they sought to create architectural fantasy and spiritual mystery transparency light and shimmering reflections glass towers the believed would replace the Cathedral as serving the new communal society in the words of Walter Gropius founder of the Bauhaus a Cathedral of socialism this evening's discussion will illuminate the combined history and fascinating narratives of three American glass houses of the mid-century years which have become myth so I would like to introduce the panel Hilary Lewis chief curator and creative director of the Glass House she is co-author of books and numerous articles on Philip Johnson and for many years worked directly with him Thank You Hilary Karl Abbott f-a-a Karl is one of the most awarded architects in Florida and the Caribbean region a graduate from Yale he studying the legendary pole Wolf's master class of 1961 to 1962 he was a member of the original service Otis school of architecture which we are going to discuss here and he's an expert on Paul Rudolph Thank You Carl Scholl Mahaffey executive director of the Farnsworth house he's a landscape architect cultural landscape historian and adjacent professor of architecture at the IIT College of Architecture I would like to start with asking each one of you what makes those Glass Houses masterpieces of architecture one of the significant things about the Farnsworth house compared to other me structures is that he was both architect and general contractor so he could really oversee the details and in fact some of the details were worked out on site that would come to characterize the rest of his American career I think in terms of historical significance the fact that he was really in a slump in the early 40s other than IIT all of his American projects the clients just declined to build to go ahead so Edith was really gave him the opportunity to sort of redeem his career and redeem himself hey Laurie the glass house Oh the glass house is unquestionably a very significant structure not only in terms of Johnson's history but also in the history of American architecture and modern architecture overall there's no question it relates very strongly to the Farnsworth House I'm sure we'll be talking a bit more about that as we continue the conversation but for Johnson it represented the ability to create something that is based on an ideal the ideal of living within glass walls as all of these houses attempted but also to integrate living with nature which is something that I think that for many people they don't fully understand until they visit our property how many people here have been to the Goss house just that's great please come back how many people have been to the Farnsworth house Wow okay good so Carl I want to ask you about Walker guest house I visited the Walker guest house in the mid 50's it was about 3 or 4 years old when I first went there I think the Walker family number here your parents your grandparents maybe but it was a building I was in high school and I look at a masterpiece by my own personal feelings and number one is it's a building that are a structure a piece of art or sculpture and it makes you feel breath take it your breath is taken away it's almost like you're in awe and that's the sense I had a walker guest house when I went there I couldn't believe it is so simple it was done before there was a bridge to Sanibel Island Sanibel is just south of excuse me out in the Gulf of Fort Myers and there was only boat to take equipment it was all based on on a 4x8 please a piece of plywood module only two people occupy the Farnsworth House before it became a museum how livable is it that's the question we often get so interestingly this was a weekend house so no one's really ever lived in the Farnsworth House Edith Farnsworth lived in Chicago she used the property on weekends as she moved into retirement in the 1960s she was there more frequently she was there in the middle of the week Peter Palumbo lived in Plano the nearby town he had a Victorian house he restored he used the house as an entertainment pavilion and and as a museum very quickly after she moved to the Farnsworth house she started talking about her problems living there the place where really took her problems and promoting them was the house beautiful magazine and there was a special issue was called the threat to the next America and Elizabeth Gordon the legendary editor of House Beautiful this is what she wrote first of all she said something is rotten in the state of design and he's spoiling some of our best efforts in modern living then she takes Edith Farnsworth and she interviewed her and this is what she said she said do I feel come the truth is that this house will it's four walls of glass I feel like it prowling animal always on the alert I'm always Restless I'm just listening this and realizing I think for many people they would feel exactly like that and it couldn't be more different in terms of the experience of Phillip Johnson living in a house surrounded by glass walls where he felt absolutely calm and delighted to be in that space and it certainly wouldn't have made sense for for many people in terms of their design ethos but for someone who liked absolute precision as well as this very careful integration of the built world with the natural world Johnson was very pleased to spend many decades from 49 until the time he died in 2005 living in the Glass House so it's not for everyone and I just want to show you a picture this is the photo in house beautiful I mean she looks so miserable so Rudolph was really brought a brilliant solution to live in the glass house exactly solution for exactly those problems by adding these compartments does this make they walk her house more livable I heard the Walker part of one of the ladies of the Walker house speak about it questioning it first and then she said she got to love it so I don't know that way of living it there so it's not I can't really answer they're off that question directly but it is a building that the walls flip down and so you can make the walls totally private you don't draw your curtain you drop the wall so for me living in this space has been a really a sacred experience and I would say that what you had said in beginning that it takes your breath away because you become part of nature it doesn't you know you don't insert yourself into nature it sort of puts its arms around you and the other thing that I want to say is it sort of participatory architecture which this thing about lifting the flaps up and down it's so much fun to do that glasshouse who is his most well known house probably his best but it really started when he curated a show at MoMA in 1947 and Mies presented the model of the Farnsworth House Philip Johnson admitted that this was the source of inspiration how do you address that aspect in the narrative of the gas house or Johnson was never shy about discussing his sources very different than the approach that many architects in modernism would have followed he did not lie to me Slyke do it just behind his back but what he did do was not necessarily pleasing to me Sandro because not just because he copied him because he didn't copy him enough the Glass House is quite different from both of these structures in the same way or actually in a different way but in a similar vein as you discussed Carl but this is bringing together of the Frank Lloyd Wright American nature of architecture Johnson in a weird way did that as well Scott I want to talk to you about Edith Farnsworth so we know that she wasn't very happy with the house and she had a whole different way of thinking how she's going to furnish her house which was totally different than one then what miss envisioned and this is how it looked like and I know that next year you plan an exhibition that will dress the Farnsworth house they were the same way she lived in why is it important well so she told me very early on that she didn't want his furniture and as a project start to go over budget of course that was one place that she drew the line she rides in her journal that she told me so that's furniture to her was like a second skin and she needed it to be comfortable for her mies was constantly searching for the absolute for the timeless and he devised a very specific formula for that today when we look at mrs. House's Farnsworth house it has a great revival and you can see so many houses built this way today all over the world it wasn't always perceived timeless I know you went to Yale in the early sixties he went you studied with Vincent Scully and he was the first one to really or maybe famously to question modernism he really made the Mies formula not that timeless during the 60s 70s in particularly 80s so my question to you is how timeless is it I think you have to stand back and sometimes there's a comment I've heard often we don't like what our parents like we like what our grandparents like I think that really applies to a lot of art and architecture and let me let me tie this back to what you asked about stems from Scully we all had a really close relationship with Scully I felt and in those days Scully was totally a purist a purist modernist about 10 years after Ulysses in 62 Vincent Scully venturi and a whole group of charles moore and a lot of the others started pushing a whole nother direction and Scully went with it heavy and Scully was one of the strongest voices who's ever been in architectural history in America maybe the world Laurie you speak about the glass house is American what is American about it well tend to follow up some of the things that I was noting earlier the way in which even though it doesn't seem that apparent that it owes a debt to the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright in terms of the integration of architecture within the landscape and also I'm so glad you brought it up Karl because Johnson was so emphatic about the fact that the house had to be really situated on the ground that and and like a Frank Lloyd Wright structure but again looking quite different the importance of the hearth of it's such a central element as Johnson would say this is southern New England now there's lots of aspects of the way he treated the landscape which makes it a little bit like a circa 1800 Royal Park those three houses marked high points while Paul Rudolph would then go to his less successful Brutalism do you agree with me Karl in Rudolph's early work certainly the Walker guesthouse is a high high point and it's very early on he's one of his first projects was actually done when he before you to open his own officers Twitchell and Rudolph it's a very high point but Rudolph had a lot of high points what is the value of the Walker guesthouse once it's removed from its place Rudolph's building it is not on the water it is not a view of the water it is a view of the dune growth and John law and it's in a small jungle so the building could be easily relocated it was brought over there in pieces by bows now they're britches so it would be much easier to move it it's not that big but it seems enormous when you get the flaps and you get these outriggers all around the building so it's a movable building Johnson as I said earlier you used to say you cannot not know history and he felt that way even when he built the Glass House itself he said my goodness it's a 1920s house it was already a reference to history when I built it in 1949 Johnson who was never sure never slow in terms of coming up with a proper line or a boom Oh his response be the next the best project is the next one I want to talk about politics Mies was not very political I mean obviously he designed that memorial for communist activist in the 20s this was torn down by the Nazis but then he tried to get jobs from the Nazis and famously or infamously he designed the German Pavilion at the 1935 brasses World's Fair which eventually was not built because of financial limitations but Philip Johnson was more active in his politics and we know that he regretted it later on and in fact there is synagogue that he designed in Port Chester New York which it is on free for the Jewish people to overcome what he did is this something that you address we're hardly in denial of the fact that Johnson's history is a complicated one oh you said be polite about that there's no question that it's highly troubling that Johnson's career in architecture has this strange break in the late 1930s where Johnson is much more committed to fascist politics and is a is is openly a supporter of the Nazis this is enough something that one can never live down there's no question about it but Johnson unquestionably did not maintain that viewpoint for the rest of his life if he had I have I'm fairly confident he would not have had the clientele that he did being for example we showed the Seagram building built by the Bronfman family his background was well known certainly more discussed these days but it also was known in the 1940s 1950s Johnson served in the US military from 1943 to 45 and he took a lot of heat for his known political viewpoints that said I did I discuss this with him I did I discussed it with him to have a better understanding of how someone this intelligent could have gone in this direction politically and the best explanation or fix planation maybe the right term to use it's not an excuse but explanation from him was that in those days at the height of the depression there was a desire among intellectuals for better solutions politically that and what was being then what was being supported in in contemporary in the contemporary world in terms of contemporary capitalism and therefore many people either far left or they went far right now today I think we look very much askance at either choice but unquestionably going far right seems appalling so I would like to conclude here and to thank you for being here in this rainy day and to thank our panel Hilary Lewis Karl Abbot Scott me happy [Music] you

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Keywords: Architecture, Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, Paul Rudolph, Modernism, Glass Houses, The Glass House, The Farnsworth House, Walker Guest House, New Canaan, Sarasota, Chicago, Chicago Architecture, Architecture Icons, Architecture masterpieces, Design, Modernist design, Bauhaus, Mid-Century, Mid-Century Design, Mid-Century Architecture, Mid-Century America, American Architecture, American Design

Id: jnHr_WACcwg

Length: 22min 22sec (1342 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 13 2020